Some songs find us at just the right time. During the summer of 2025, while on sabbatical, my daughter June and I took a trip to my home state of Vermont. Having grown up there, it was a chance to return to familiar places, reconnect with a part of my story, and enjoy some time together. One night, we found ourselves spending the evening in Middlebury, a beautiful Vermont town that has played a significant part in my journey, where I was excited to discover that a concert was happening on the town green. We had stumbled into a performance by a duo we had never heard of before: Ordinary Elephant. What began as an unexpected stop on our trip became one of those memories that stays with you long after the vacation ends. Looking back, I see that evening as a sacred moment in my journey toward standing in the Messy Middle for those who are marginalized and overlooked. And then there was the music. Since that night, Ordinary Elephant has been on repeat across my music apps. Their songs...

  Sometimes the first step toward loving our neighbors better is recognizing what we have that others may not. For much of my life, I believed that if you worked hard, treated people well, and made good choices, you had the same opportunities as everyone else. I did not spend much time thinking about how my own circumstances shaped my experience. I am a white, cis gendered, heterosexual, married, middle class American man. I did not choose those parts of my story, but they have influenced how I experience the world and how others experience me. Growing up, I heard racist comments and absorbed assumptions about people without always questioning where those ideas came from or whom they harmed. Over time, I began to understand that my experience was not everyone's experience. Some doors opened for me without my even realizing they were closed to others. That realization helped me understand a phrase I return to often:  I didn't choose what I was given, but I can choose what I do ...

  Over the past several years, God has been changing the way I see people, understand my faith, and carry my convictions. Some of that growth has been uncomfortable because it has meant facing ways, I've hurt people while believing I was doing the right thing. That experience has left me increasingly frustrated with what we often refer to as "the Big C" church. Sometimes it feels that our need to draw lines around what we believe pushes people away from the very place where they might encounter the love of Jesus and experience the transforming power of the Gospel. I know this personally because there was a time when being right mattered more to me than understanding the people I was talking about or to. I held tightly to my convictions without thinking enough about the hurt my words and actions caused. I can't change the past, but I can own my mistakes, listen to people I once failed to hear, and change how I approach them today. I hold a Side B theology for myself an...

  In my life I have noticed something profoundly sad: we tend to honor the successful. We notice the people who have accomplished something, the people with influence, the people whose names we recognize, and the people who already seem to have a place at the table. Our culture has a way of teaching us who deserves attention and who doesn't. But Jesus entered creation to turn that way of thinking upside down. His kingdom is a kingdom where the lowly, the overlooked, and the marginalized are given dignity and honor. People who may receive less honor from the world are not less valuable to God. As a pastor, that matters to me a great deal, especially during LGBTQ+ History Month. There is something important about remembering people. What we choose to remember says something about who we believe is worth remembering. That is part of why we have moments like Black History Month, Women's History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, Disability Awareness Month, Veterans Day, and LGBTQ+ His...

  I wrote the poem Love Stands after watching Macklemore and others use their voices to stand with the people of Palestine, particularly those suffering in Gaza and the West Bank. His willingness to keep speaking, even when there is a personal cost, made me think less about the politics of the moment and more about the posture behind it. What does it mean to love people who are suffering, especially when standing with them might cost us something? That question has also been shaped by my recent visit to Israel and Palestine. Being there made the realities of this conflict much harder to keep at a distance. I met and encountered people on both sides who lament the pain, loss, fear, and division that have become part of everyday life. There are Israelis and Palestinians who genuinely long for something different; they do not all want the division to continue. And yet, there is a painful tension in that reality. The people who live with the consequences of division are not always the ...

  One of the greatest struggles of my faith journey has been learning to hold two truths together that can sometimes feel impossible to reconcile. God is bigger than I could ever comprehend, the Creator and Sustainer of everything I can see and everything I cannot. Yet somehow, in the middle of all that vastness, my pain still matters to Him. I have wrestled with that in some deeply painful moments. I remember   losing   a friend who dropped dead in front of me, and the profound grief of realizing how fragile life can be. In moments like that, it is easy to wonder how the God who holds the universe together could possibly be present in the pain unfolding in one small human life. Psalm 147 gives us a breathtaking answer. The God who counts and names the stars is also the God who heals broken hearts. His greatness does not make Him distant from our pain. In fact, this psalm reveals that His power and His compassion are deeply connected. But as I have spent more time sitting...

  When I refer to the Messy Middle, I am referencing the space between the now and yet still to come promises of the Gospel. Think of it as that place where the holiness of the divine creator intersects with the lived experience of the sacred creation. It is this foundational belief that deeply influences my ministry philosophy and drives my purpose as a Pastor. Imagine the beauty of this messy space as the fulfillment of the account told in Matthew 22:36-40  Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” The Messy Middle is the space where love of God becomes love of neighbor. Every neighbor! It is essential that we employ this filter because Jesus clearly stated ALL of scripture, both old...

Writers Note: Re-edited (8/8/26) to include deeper dive into why "Messy Middle" and Posture fit into my exploration of Psalm 100. There are some seasons when gratitude comes easily. When the prayer is answered, the relationship is restored, the diagnosis is good, or life simply seems to be going our way, thanking God doesn't require much effort. But what about the seasons when it doesn't? What about the unanswered prayer, the complicated relationship, the disappointment that still hurts, or the questions we carry without any easy answers? What do we do with gratitude when life is still messy? That is one of the reasons I have been thinking differently about Psalm 100 lately. We tend to read Psalm 100 as a simple call to thanksgiving, and it certainly is that. But I think there is something deeper happening. Psalm 100 is giving us a posture for living when life is not yet what we hope it will be. That is what I mean by the Messy Middle. We are living between the broken...

  I've been working through a book on writing poetry, and one of the prompts simply said,   Write a letter to your younger self.   I wasn't expecting where it would take me. As I wrote, I found myself speaking to the little boy who lived in a house that many people probably thought was normal enough. What most people couldn't see was the abuse my siblings and I endured, the neglect, the chaos created by addiction, and the constant message that I specifically was unwanted and always would be. It was so deeply embedded that one her death bed my mother stated that in her mind I didn’t even exist. Those are heavy words to write, but they are part of my story. The poem isn't about pretending those years didn't happen. Trauma doesn't disappear because enough time passes or because life becomes good. Some days those memories feel far away while on other days they arrive without warning, carried by a smell, a sound, or a feeling that suddenly makes the past feel painful...